Sinead O’Connor Describes Her Mother as Having ‘The Smell of Evil’ on ‘Dr. Phil’

Sinead O'Connor discussed her mother's abuse and her recent suicide attempts on the premiere of the 16th season of Dr. Phil. You can watch various clips from the episode above.

"She kicked the s--- out of me," she said in the first segment when asked what she most resents about her mother. "She won't change her clothes. She won't wash -- same for us; five years living with the same clothes, no washing. She won't heat the house. She won't get lights. She won't get out of bed. She won't stop taking drugs. She never tells me I'm pretty. She never tells me I'm sweet. She makes my little brother scream. She smells sick; there was a smell about her that was sickness -- the smell of evil, you know?"

She expanded on the line used in the promotional trailer where she said that the things she most loves about her mother is "that she's dead." Calling it a "very strange thing to come to mind," she admitted, "I miss her horribly. I really ache for her, and I think that's part of where my suicidal instinct comes from. Because I want my mother. But I cannot wait until the day that I naturally get to heaven so that I can see my mother again."

The two patched things up when Sinead was 14, although that lasted a couple of years. After not speaking to her for nine months, "Next thing I her she's dead in a car crash," she said. "It was very kind of God to take her. Her life was hell. You wouldn't want to be her. So I was relieved for her, relieved for me, but devastated at the loss of her. She was my best friend."

O'Connor also discussed the video that she made last month about the loneliness that accompanies her mental illness, and resulted in eight suicide attempts in one year. The suicidal thoughts started her attempts to communicate with her family via letters were unsuccessful. “I thought it would be better maybe if my family saw how I’m feeling, they would relate to it," she said. "I hoped in my kidney stone madness that my family would see it and go, ‘Oh my God, we didn’t realize it’s that bad. We’ll go get her.'”

"What kicked all of this off, really, was that I had a hysterectomy, a radical hysterectomy, in Ireland two years ago," she continued. "And I lost my mind after that. ... I was told to leave the hospital two days after the surgery with Tylenol and no hormone replacements and no guidance as to what might happen to me. I was flung into surgical menopause. So hormones were everywhere and I became very suicidal. I was a basket case.”